Mentoring Two FIRST Robotics Teams across Upstate New York while attending College at the Rochester Institute of Technology

Last Minute Practice and Upgrades

5254 and 20 have been hard at work getting ready for the 2015 IRI, and both will be at the same practice field together tomorrow night.

5254 has been fixing problems we found from MidKnight Mayhem. The can stabilization device has been modified so it wraps around the can, so the can can’t fall out easily. We also built two new ramps (for those that have seen us repeatedly, these are 5254’s 4th and 5th ramps this season).

At Tech Valley, 5254 built a simple ramp that doubled their throughput at the feeder station. For Finger Lakes, they built a shorter ramp that would allow for some robots to perform 3 tote autonomous routines even when the ramp was there. For champs, they built a long ramp that they didn’t use outside of practice round, but we used it at MidKnight Mayhem because with increased elevator and intake speed, we could make stacks faster with it. However, it didn’t leave much room to maneuver on that side of the field.

For IRI, we developed two ramps in parallel. One is just a smaller version of our previous 1114-style long ramp.

The other is heavily inspired by FRC Team 1806‘s ramp. The ramp does not fold down, like 1806’s or 1114’s, but it does allow our robot to start next to it to run our tote stack autonomous routine, as well as direct the totes parallel to the field wall, such that we have both more room to maneuver, and greatly reduced time noodling cans.

With time to practice both the new ramps and the landfill in the next two days, 5254 should come out swinging at IRI, assuming one of the new items doesn’t backfire. Fingers Crossed. If things go really well, we might produce an IRI hype video, but that’s even less likely, as we have a lot of work to do.

Team 20 has been practicing with our new fold-down tote catcher, creating 2 capped stacks of 6 more and more consistently. The tote catcher folds down to allow teams to run their tote stack autonomous modes even when we’re set up on the right feeder station. We’re also making our championships can grabbers more consistent. Hopefully practicing with 5254 the next two days will allow us to practice our new routine in more realistic conditions.

Update: After Monday night’s practice, 5254 was making 4 capped and noodled stacks of 5 from the feeder station and three capped stacks of 5 from the landfill. The robot is currently having issues lifting a stack of 5, so for practice’s purposes, the robot was only making stacks of five last night. Autonomous also wasn’t work for 5254. Today’s practice will focus on consistency in the landfill and at the feeder, as well as autonomous. Hopefully tomorrow we can fix the lifter so we can make stacks of 6 again.